\n<\/p>\n
P<\/span>ictured on her official website smiling on a country walk with her golden retriever, Katie Lam looks every inch the traditional Conservative MP. But make no mistake: this is a very modern breed of Tory, and one whose rise gives a clue to the current direction of UK politics.<\/p>\n Still only 34 and in parliament for little over a year, Lam is named almost ubiquitously by fellow Conservatives as a likely future leader \u2013 even, some venture, a direct replacement for Kemi Badenoch.<\/p>\n Lam does have the sort of CV almost designed to impress Tory constituency associations, with its route from state school to Cambridge, Goldman Sachs, then stints as an aide in Downing Street and the Home Office.<\/p>\n It is when you look at Lam\u2019s X account that the picture become more complicated. Just about every single message is about migration or grooming gangs, with a heavy focus on crimes committed by asylum seekers. \u201cWe already have British sex criminals,\u201d one message reads. \u201cWe don\u2019t need any more!\u201d<\/p>\n Although this is in part her brief \u2013 Lam is a shadow Home Office minister as well as a whip \u2013 the sheer intensity of the focus on problems supposedly caused by migrants or people from minority ethnic communities is striking, while the language is often of a sort that only a few years ago would have been the preserve of hard-right populism.<\/p>\n It is a striking trajectory for someone whose socialist great-great-grandfather fled the Nazis in Germany, whose grandparents met while delivering leaflets for the Labour party, and who was herself a deputy chief of staff to Boris Johnson, now so reviled by right-leaning Tories for his relaxed approach to migration.<\/p>\n One senior Conservative who recalls Lam from her time in Johnson\u2019s No 10 says that while her job was more administrative than policy-focused, she showed no signs then of anti-migration zeal.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen she did weigh in on policy, it was standard, middle-of-the-road Tory stuff,\u201d they said. \u201cThere was no evidence of her thinking that before. But people can change their minds.\u201d<\/p>\n Allies of Lam insist the idea of a Damascene conversion is unfair and that as a Brexit supporter she has always supported a more robust approach to borders and legal sovereignty.<\/p>\n This was seemingly the case by the time Lam worked as an aide to the then home secretary, Suella Braverman. One contemporary recalls that while Lam\u2019s primary focus was national security, she was known to support the UK leaving the European convention on human rights.<\/p>\n And as another former colleague noted, even if Lam has changed her mind, she is far from alone in the party. \u201cYou are hearing all sorts of people saying all sorts of things you wouldn\u2019t have heard before, like Kemi saying some cultures are inferior to others. And Robert Jenrick has certainly been on a journey. But that\u2019s also part of a vibe shift in the country as a whole,\u201d the ex-colleague said.<\/p>\n <\/span>Katie Lam speaking in the House of Commons.<\/span> Photograph: House of Commons<\/p>\n There is more consensus about Lam herself, with even those unimpressed with some of her views agreeing she is dedicated, clever and a fun colleague, as well as being quietly but intensely ambitious.<\/p>\n \u201cShe laughs a lot, and she\u2019s a warm character, but you piece it all together \u2013 president of the Cambridge Union, Goldman Sachs, No 10 \u2013 you realise that she\u2019s very, very driven,\u201d one former colleague said.<\/p>\n It seems this has always been the case. Growing up, Lam\u2019s Surrey comprehensive did not offer Latin or Greek so she studied independently and went on to take classics at Cambridge.<\/p>\n Aside from politics, she is an accomplished lyricist and scriptwriter, co-writing five musicals with a childhood friend, including a well-reviewed recent version of The Railway Children.<\/p>\n A fellow Conservative MP calls Lam \u201csuper-impressive\u201d and the ideal fit for what they argue is a party and a country moving decisively to the right on migration.<\/p>\n \u201cKatie is a good messenger \u2013 she\u2019s obviously not a rightwing skinhead. But she is genuine,\u201d they said. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t come to this from an old-school rightwing head space. She is responding to what is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n Others are more sceptical. \u201cIt\u2019s a sign of the party\u2019s difficulties that she\u2019s being talked about as a potential leader after just 15 months,\u201d one senior Tory said. \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt that she\u2019s personable and clever, but from what I\u2019ve seen she hasn\u2019t really set things on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n In this fast-changing Tory world, Lam potentially faces another barrier to advancement given her close links to what one Conservative called \u201cthe old regime\u201d of Johnson, now so comprehensively rejected by the party.<\/p>\n There is, of course, another element to this, one often forgotten when Conservatives discuss future leaders: the world beyond the party.<\/p>\n A Liberal Democrat source said traditional Tory voters in so-called \u201cblue wall\u201d seats, dozens of which were won by Ed Davey\u2019s party at the election, would be \u201cbewildered\u201d by the idea of Lam being touted as the future of conservatism.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact rising stars in the Conservative party believe they can win back the blue wall with a Nigel Farage tribute act on social media shows how dramatically out of touch they have become,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pictured on her official website smiling on a country walk with her golden retriever, Katie Lam looks every inch the traditional Conservative MP. But make no mistake: this is a very modern breed of Tory, and one whose rise gives a clue to the current direction of UK politics. Still only 34 and in parliament<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[1686,3610,15598,135,1919,9557,15599,313,573,2268],"class_list":{"0":"post-25866","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-conservatives","9":"tag-katie","10":"tag-lam","11":"tag-leader","12":"tag-migration","13":"tag-reflects","14":"tag-rightward","15":"tag-rise","16":"tag-shift","17":"tag-tory"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}